What began as a class assignment for Product Development, taught by Cornell professor of fiber science and apparel design Susan Ashdown in the College of Human Ecology, turned into a deeper look into plus-size proportions.

The professor gave the class a broad assignment: to define clothing for a niche market. Three of the students, mentioned above, researched the topic and discovered that few clothes are designed exclusively for plus-size women.

"A lot of the clothes [for plus-size women] are really just sized up from smaller proportions, which fit really strangely," Zwanziger told the Cornell Chronicle. "Issues of health aside, we're all different body shapes and body proportions. Each person deserves to have clothing designed for them as they are, not as they relate to some abstract industry shape."

So, the students got to work but ran into a roadblock: Making a fashion line specifically for larger women is a very different process, but an important one, Ashdown said. But before they could begin designing plus-size clothes, the students had to build a mannequin with the right proportions because so few are built with plus-size women in mind.

Cornell told Cosmo that they used a body scan of a size 24 woman taken in Cornell's 3D body scanner to create a pattern for their model. Using a laser cutter, they cut out thin slices of foam and stacked them from waist up to create the mannequin. (It is a half-scale dress form, the type commonly used by designers to develop prototype garment patterns.)

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The students completed their work and presented their final designs, a collection called Rubens' Women, featuring four jackets, a skirt, and pants tailored to complement the curves of larger women.

Word on the street is that they received a positive response from a San Francisco-based manufacturer regarding their initial designs, so who knows, maybe companies will take on this plus-size mannequin model to create better-fitting clothing for plus-size women.